A Photo for a Family Album

As the result of a browser discovering this blog, I can share some details about the lives of the Berry brothers. A granddaughter of Sylvester Wiley Berry found this site and contacted me about her grandfather and his older brother. I was able to confirm that in the 1880s both attended Western Reserve Academy and then Adelbert College of Western Reserve University (Cleveland).

The older brother, John Faris Berry, was born in 1866 in West Liberty, West Virginia. He graduated from WRA in 1884 and went on after college to a distinguished career as a classics teacher, an ordained minister serving churches in Michigan and Ohio, and a registrar for the School of Dentistry at WRU. John Faris Berry responded to alumni surveys in 1906 and again in 1933. With his 1933 survey, he included this note: "I little realized how much Western Reserve Academy was doing for me. As I grow older I wonder still more if I realize or appreciate how great is the debt that I can never repay to Western Reserve Academy and its teachers." Newton B. Hobart was the school's headmaster when both brothers were students.

Berry retired to Arizona where he died in 1951 and was returned to Hudson for burial at Markillie Cemetery.

Sylvester Wiley Berry, the younger of the two, was born in 1868 and graduated with the WRA class of 1889 as one of just 16 seniors -- 13 men and three women. He earned his degree from Adelbert College in 1893, then went to New York City where he had a career as a teacher and a camp director. In 1926 he was still teaching at the Irving School in New York, but two years later he died at the age of 60.

Archivist's Note: In 1885, WRA began requiring students to have a senior photo, so I have a good photo of Sylvester Berry taken in 1889. Since his descendant had no picture of her grandfather as a young man, I was pleased to be able to send her the one shown here to share with family members.

Thanks for the inquiry!